Lady A Winner At Last!

At last Ladyvie managed to get her head in front.  She won the handicap chase at Newton Abbot on Saturday under a good ride from conditional jockey Conor O'Farrell, who had obviously had enough time to dry out after the Lesters on Thursday night!  We knew that she had ability, but up until now she had not consented to use all of it - the switch back to fences and faster ground seemed to help her and now that she has got her head in front, hopefully she may be able to build on that and could follow-up.  Earlier on the card Terfels Toscar had been beaten on the nod by Fashion Week and his turn cannot be far away.

Shoegazer , a winner at Ffos Las last season, is our only runner this afternoon

We have just one runner this afternoon, Shoegazer who has to carry topweight in the 2m4f handicap hurdle at Chepstow.  Our seven year old performed creditably on his first start after a break last time and with only a low mileage on the clock is still open to some improvement.

It is a big day in Ireland with the Irish National taking place at Fairyhouse.  There are thirty runnes chasing the first prize of £141,000 and with the bookies going 10/1 the field, it is a fiercely competitive handicap.  With good ground forecast, a lot will depend on whose jumping holds up the best.

*****

What a great weekend of sport, and what another terrible decision by a referee at Old Trafford to send off QPR player Shaun Derry!  He challenged Ashley Young in the penalty area and rather than try to score, the Man Utd player just threw himself to the floor.  It was quite frankly pathetic and to make matters worse - he was clearly off-side!  It should never have resulted in a sending off and a penalty for United!  Sorry Eddie and Tony - it's just the way I see it.  It is about time that television technology was introduced for decisions such as these - it would only take a matter of seconds to unravel such a mess and would have stopped all of the problems.

Meanwhile, Manchester City continued their incredible fall from grace with defeat against Arsenal.  City are looking terrible at the moment and it is hard to believe that they are the team that carried all before them in the early part of the season.  Personally I would ship Balotelli out as soon as possible - he looks like trouble to me and you don't need players like that on your team.

*****

Bubba Watson won the Masters in a dramatic play-off at the weekend.  Throw all your golf teaching manuals out of the window - the way Bubba swings, there is hope for us all!  Mind you, he does hit the ball very hard and a long way.  Lee Westwood finished joint third after a final round of 68 - if he could putt consistently well, he would surely have won a Major by now?